


We're Only Young Once

by AlexKingOfTheDamned, swimsalot



Series: More generally unrelated high school shenanigans [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Afghanistan, Alternate Universe - High School, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Permanent Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 11:12:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexKingOfTheDamned/pseuds/AlexKingOfTheDamned, https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimsalot/pseuds/swimsalot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After losing his hearing in Afghanistan, high school dropout Clint Barton goes home to his lover and old government teacher, Mr. Coulson for some TLC</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're Only Young Once

**Author's Note:**

> nothing but fluff basically. shameless fluff.

It’s amazing how quickly the rug can be pulled out from under your feet in war. All it takes is one glorified fire cracker. Six dead, ten injured, four discharged.

 

Three weeks after he was brought back to the states from Afghanistan, Clint is finally released from the hospital. His ear infection has finally cleared up and his broken arm is halfway to healed. He thinks he should have been released at least a week earlier and most of the staff would have agreed if he hadn't been so depressed that he posed a danger to himself.

 

He'd finally come to grips with losing his hearing and accepted that his life isn't completely over when his lover of five years, Phil, asked him to move into the house he bought while Clint was serving. Clint thinks he’ll miss the old apartment Phil used to have, which was small and cozy and just the right size for two people, but a house might be nice, too. That was good enough for the hospital staff who agreed to let him go after a few more days of observation and testing.

 

It's already past four PM by the time all the paperwork is filled out and Clint is finally allowed to wear his own clothes again. That much alone he's grateful for. Or would be if the hospital staff would actually let him leave.

 

"I won't use that goddamn chair." he says again, crossing his arms as well as he can with the left in a cast. "I'm gonna walk out of here with some dignity."

 

The nurse looks on the verge of tears and tries to explain again that it's hospital policy that patients leave in a wheelchair but Clint pretends not to hear her. Phil is waiting for him in the lobby downstairs and he knows he's wasting his time but he's not about to be wheeled down like some invalid. He won't let Phil see him like that again.

 

"Please sir." the nurse begs and Clint starts to feel a little bad for making things so much harder for her. She's obviously new and not as tough as the other nurses yet. "It's just out to the parking lot."

 

"I'm leaving here with dignity." he responds. "I've earned that much."

 

The nurse doesn't know how to respond and leaves him, only to return a few minutes later with an older woman who orders him into the chair like a mother might order an unruly child into bed. He gives her the same speech and she threatens to sedate him and roll him out half awake and drooling in front of everyone. Clint can't tell if she's bluffing and reluctantly sits in the chair, grumbling loudly, and allows himself to be wheeled to the elevator and taken to the lobby where Phil is waiting for him.

 

Phil, the government teacher in question, is standing in a pressed suit as always, gazing out a window. He turns his head when he hears the elevator ding open, and his face lights up as he lays eyes on Clint. He notices the younger man shrink down into his wheelchair.

 

“Clint,” he paces up to him, his shoes loud on the shiny tile floor. He leans down to kiss Clint’s temple, running his hands down the back of his neck to soothe him. “Ready to come home with me?”

 

"That depends, will I get to walk through the door or are you gonna carry me over the threshold?" Clint asks, glaring up at the bossy nurse still holding onto his chair. She doesn't reply and he turns away from her to tug his old teacher back down for a quick kiss on the cheek. "I'm ready. Get me out of here."

 

When Clint stands up out of the chair on the entryway of the hospital, he wobbles a little. His equilibrium has yet to balance out. Phil is right there though to wrap his arms around the unsteady young man and keep him on his feet.

 

He doesn’t say anything about Clint’s jelly legs the whole way to the car. He knows about the young man’s pride. He’s known about it since he was a young rascal in Phil’s classes all through high school, when their wayward relationship technically started. But if you asked anyone, they’d tell you it happened long after Clint dropped out, got his GED, and started working full time before shipping off for Afghanistan; “It was just one of those things that happened to happen.” While Clint’s eagerness at sixteen never lent itself to Phil thinking of the situation as statutory rape, he still doesn’t want to get tried and sent to prison over it three years after Clint officially turned legal.

 

As they approach the parking lot and head down one of the many rows, Phil fishes into his pocket and pulls out a set of keys. With the click of a button, a cherry red Chevrolet Corvette convertible lights up with a chirrup.

 

"Whoa." Clint says, pushing himself out of Phil's arms to examine the car more closely. "When did you get this pretty lady? You can't afford this on a teacher's salary. You got a rich aunt who left it to you or something?"

 

Phil chuckles a little as he leans against the side of the car. “No, I…” he clears his throat. “It was just a little bit of retail therapy, if you know what I mean.”

 

"No." Clint says, pushing himself up and turning to look at Phil. He leans against the car, trying to look cool and nonchalant and hoping Phil wouldn't notice how close to losing his footing he is.

 

“Right, well,” Phil trails off and opens Clint’s door for him, letting him drop into the passenger seat before closing the door behind him. “Do you want me to put the top up? The wind might do weird things for your um… hearing aids.”

 

He still feels weird saying it, like by acknowledging their existence, Clint will be reminded that he’s deaf. As though he’s capable of forgetting.

 

"I can take them out." Clint says, already reaching for the uncomfortable hearing aids the hospital had provided. "I'd like to feel the wind after being shut up in there for so long."

 

“Note to self, don’t talk to you on the ride home,” Phil chuckles as the plastic slips out of Clint’s ears.

 

The drive is tense. Phil has so many questions he wants to ask about Afghanistan, but he doesn’t want to make Clint put the hearing aids back in. He looks peaceful, staring out past the edge of the car.

 

When the ride slows down as they get off the highway and pull into a residential area, Clint’s eyes widen as they pass into a gated community.

 

Phil still doesn’t say anything as they pull into a big white house identical to all the other big white houses, with the exception of the fact that Phil doesn’t fly an American flag out front and he doesn’t have a fountain on his lawn.

 

He looks right at Clint and gestures for him to put his hearing aids back in. After they’re in place, he rubs the younger man’s shoulder. “We’re home,” he says.

 

"You said you got a house!" Clint exclaims, staring up at Phil's new home. "This is a mansion. This is huge. I don't think....Phil this really isn't the right kind of place for me."

 

“It’s not a mansion,” Phil laughs. “It’s only two stories. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms. It’s average. Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.”

 

He opens Clint’s door and helps him stagger to his feet. Clint’s eyes are fixated to the house. Phil sighs.

 

“It is the right kind of place for you,” he says quietly, rubbing his hands up and down Clint’s arms. “Because it’s my home. My home will always be the right place for you.”

 

"I'm not a classy guy Phil and this is a classy place. You can just set up a tent for me in the backyard." Clint says, only half joking. The house is too clean. Even from the outside it's too clean and he feels like he's ruining it just by looking at it too closely.

 

“Well then you’ll just have to rough up the inside a bit with your bad boy charm,” Phil says, knocking his knuckles gently against Clint’s jaw.

 

He sighs when Clint’s expression doesn’t change. He takes the young man’s hands and looks down at his feet, and takes a deep breath.

 

“I bought this place when I got the news that you were MIA, and they declared you dead,” he says quietly. “I was… I was so stunned and scared and I wanted to surround myself with good energy and nice people. I didn’t buy this place with you in mind, because I thought… I thought you were dead.” He looks up again, and even though he’s trying so hard to keep his face calm, his eyes are shiny.  “And then I got the news that they found you but you were all mangled up and your ears were bleeding but you were alive, but I already took out a mortgage plan, and…” he casts his eyes down again. “It can be our home, if you let it.”

 

Clint sucks in a breath and doesn't let it out. He looks up at the house again and over at Phil, taking in his silently pleading eyes. Finally he lets out a long sigh.

 

"Mind helping me inside? I'm not sure I can get up the porch stairs alone." he says with a small smile. Phil is right. It can be their home. It's not the type of home he's ever expected or really wanted but it's his and Phil's home and that makes it perfect. Or as close to perfect as they can get.

 

Phil helps the younger man hobble up the stairs, one arm around his waist and the other holding onto the hand that Clint threw over his shoulder. He releases his hand to open the front door, which has a big round crystal window in it.

 

Clint is surprised to walk into an open floor plan. He can see the kitchen and living room and dining room are all in one big open space with nothing but the different tiles and hard wood flooring to separate the areas. A very artistic-looking chandelier hangs from the high ceiling, with geometric glass pieces surrounding a big round bulb. The windows are big and there’s even a few skylights, but Clint recognizes most of the furniture from Phil’s old apartment before he shipped off, so it feels a little homey.

 

A big staircase leads up to a wrap-around balcony and a long hallway that fades off into darkness.

 

“Home sweet home,” Phil shrugs, stepping out of his shoes on a clean brown mat, and helps Clint to keep his balance while he does the same. “Are you hungry or thirsty? Or would you prefer to take a look around first?”

 

"No food. Water will be fine." Clint says, not mentioning what they both know. He hasn't been able to keep much in his stomach since he came back from Afghanistan. "I don't know if I'll be able to handle a full flight of stairs yet. I might have to spend a few nights on the couch."

 

“Well remember, that couch pulls out into a bed,” Phil says, depositing his young lover gently in the chair he always used to sit in when he visited Phil’s apartment. He heads over to the fridge and pulls out a bottle of water, cracking it open and handing it off to Clint. “So I’ll sleep down here with you.”

 

Clint shakes his head. "Your back will be killing you all day if you do that. You should sleep in your own bed. I'm not here to make life harder for you remember?"

 

Phil cups Clint’s face and kisses him, gently. “I just got you back after thinking you were dead for a month. I’m not sleeping in my bed alone for one more night.”

 

Clint holds Phil close and kisses him again. "Then I guess we're gonna have to find a way to get me upstairs when the time comes." he says with a laugh. Pulling away he starts to move slowly around the open first floor. "Right now I want you to tell me everything you can about this place. I wanna feel like I've been living here with you the whole time alright?"

 

Phil leads Clint around slowly, chatting about all the quirks of his home. How the pantry is doomed to forever smell like mothballs, and the fact that there’s a doggy door in the back wall that leads to a big fenced-in backyard, and a patio with a grill he’s never touched. He tells Clint about the terrace in the back upstairs that overlooks the yard and has a hot tub built in, which lays covered and empty.

 

He talks about the fact that the grey granite counters are actually fake, and scratch really easily, and how the light over the stove starts to hum if it’s on for more than an hour. He tells Clint that when it rains, the living room is the best place to be to listen to it through the sky lights, and how the automated lawn sprinklers always used to startle him when they came on in the evenings.

 

The new bed he put his old mattress on doesn’t squeak at all, and the basement has a pool table in it that the last residents left behind, covered with a cloth, but it has a full set of balls and six cues. The garage is full of mice that are blocked off from getting into the house, but Phil hasn’t gotten around to calling an exterminator for, and that’s why he won’t park Lola – that’s his car, by the way – inside.

 

“The bedroom is too big for one person, and I got lonely a lot of the times, so I bought a canopy,” Phil explains. “I would draw the curtains around the bed to feel like the space was a little bit smaller.”

 

"You're not gonna be alone anymore." Clint tells him, squeezing Phil's hand. There's a promise implied in his tone but he doesn't voice it out loud. "And I love the house. It's big and scary but we can make it nice. I can fix the light over the stove for you and I bet after a few months that bed'll start to squeak just like the old one."

 

Phil grins as Clint mentions their old sex life, and wraps his arms around the younger man’s waist.

 

“Do you think you can make it up the stairs now? I have a gift for you in the bedroom,” he says.

 

“A gift in the bedroom,” Clint repeats, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

 

“Not that kind of gift,” Phil laughs, shaking his head and knocking his forehead gently into Clint’s. “It just happens to be in my bedroom closet. I can bring it down though, if you’d prefer.”

 

"No I'd like to see the bedroom. And the balcony. I like high places." Clint reminds him. He starts toward the stairs, keeping a hand on Phil's shoulder. "I'm gonna go up first okay? Stay behind me so I don't fall. If I start to wobble catch me."

 

Clint only staggers twice, and even manages to catch himself one time on the banister. Phil brings Clint through the upstairs, showing him the two extra bedrooms, one of which is empty and the other has been transformed into a teacher’s paradise with a plush carpet and all sorts of books on big shelves and a nice desk with a comfy-looking rolling chair and a lamp and plenty of desktop space to grade papers on beside his big computer, which is on screensaver.

 

Phil’s bedroom is mostly unfurnished. Thick navy blue curtains are tied to all four bed posts, and there’s a lamp on the dresser at the other end of the room and a full-length mirror opposite the bed, but besides that it’s pretty barren. The door to the master bathroom is open, and Clint can see that it’s almost as big as the bedroom itself with fluffy towels heaped on the counter space beside a deep sink, and a giant tub with a sliding glass door for showering purposes.

 

“I bought a shower chair for you, in case you wanted to use it,” Phil explains as Clint eyes the white plastic seat in the shower. “It folds up if you don’t want to, though. I  just don’t want you slipping in the shower.”

 

"Let's just get a mat for the tub." Clint says with clear disgust. Just looking at the chair makes him feel small and weak and pathetic and he wishes he had the strength to lift it out of the tub and throw it over the balcony.

 

"So where's my present?" he asks, turning from the insulting chair and staggering out of the bathroom back towards the bedroom.

 

Phil sits Clint on the grey comforter on his bed and tells him to close his eyes. Looking back three times to make sure he isn’t peeking, he pulls out a big old fashioned suitcase with rigid edges and clasps. He sets it on Clint’s lap, and his eyes open.

 

“Open it,” he urges, gesturing to the rolling lock clasp system. “It’s unlocked.”

 

Clint smiles and opens the case. Inside is a bow and set of arrows. Clint's eyes go wide as he lifts the bow out of its case and realizes it's the old one he'd left behind when he joined the army. It's been polished and restrung but as soon as it's in his hands he knows it's his. He spent years honing his favorite hobby, as archaic as it was, and it was because of the sharp eye it gave him over the years that he was assigned a position as sniper in Afghanistan.

 

"Phil you kept it?" he asks, looking at his lover. "I can't believe you didn't throw it away. Wow thank you."

 

“It might be too short for you now, because you’ve grown,” Phil says, running his hand over Clint’s hair. “But I thought maybe, I mean if you ever wanted… to have a family… you could teach the kid to shoot like you did.”

 

Clint's smile fades into something small and pained and he sets the bow back in its case. "I'm not ready for kids Phil. I'm not even ready to think about kids. I just got back from all the fighting and I can barely stand up on my own. You don't even trust me to be able to take a shower without falling and killing myself. And I wouldn't be able to teach a kid anyway with my balance like this. I'm sorry but I don't think that's something I can do."

 

He stops when he realizes he can't breathe. He'd started speaking faster and faster and can't seem to suck in enough air anymore. The room starts to tilt and he pushes the bow off his lap to grab one of the posts of the canopy.

 

Phil gently rubs Clint’s back. “Shh, breathe. I didn’t mean any time soon. I should have clarified, I meant more like in a decade or so. Shh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

 

He pulls Clint into his chest and rocks him gently, trying to soothe his shaking. He rubs his hand up and down his trembling lover’s back, gently reminding him to breathe with whispered words.

 

"I'm sorry," Clint says again, holding onto Phil. He lets the older man's whispers and gentle touches slowly soothe him. "I want you to be happy and have a family. I want to have a family with you just not now. Not yet. I can't yet."

 

“Not yet,” Phil agrees softly. “Not yet.”

 

He holds Clint until his breathing is normal again, drying the younger man’s tears with the end of his tie.

 

“Tommorrow is Sunday,” he reminds Clint. “Which means I don’t have to go in to the school. It’s only six PM now, but what do you feel about going to bed early? We might wake up at two in the morning, but hey, we’re only young once right?”

 

He means it as a joke, because he’s 35 years old to Clint’s 21, but the words themselves carry a much heavier weight than he meant them to.

 

They’re only young once. Clint almost died young, almost left Phil behind. Phil almost stepped off the roof of the school when he found out, almost died young. They’re only young once, and they’re only going to be together for this one life side by side, so they’ve got to make it count.

 

They crawl into bed mostly clothed and press together as tightly as they can, and Phil hums until they fall asleep.


End file.
